


All of Our Secrets

by birdzilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8002843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of Voltron's paladins are ordinary humans, but all of them want to keep their secrets to themselves. Allura finds this... frustrating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. just a knack

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to [a prompt](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?thread=116617#cmt116617) on the kink meme. The original prompt was, in part:
>
>> Inspired slightly by other prompts I've seen on this meme. I'd like a fic where all five of the paladins are either alien, part alien, or mutant/meta-human. And all of them think the rest of the team are full, normal human beings. I'd prefer humour or fluff, but h/c is good too.
> 
> Certain pilots stubbornly resisted the attempt to make this straight humor, but I did my best. I've made some minor edits for this version. This story does contain series through the end of Season 1.

"What in the world are they doing?" Allura whispered to the mouse on the console beside her. The mouse shrugged complacently back.

Two levels below her, on the catwalks that interlaced the castle's storage bays, Hunk and Lance were bickering. The catwalk they were on nearly touched the wall, and round-edged triangular shapes on the wall marked enormous drawers that could be drawn out into the space between when accessed. Hunk had his hand out as if to trigger them, but he didn't quite touch any of the buttons, though he paused at each drawer. He kept looking dubiously at Lance, who had his eyes closed and was clinging to Hunk's shoulder as they walked.

"Are you sure you actually know what you're trying to find?" he asked.

"Of course I know! Coran showed me pictures! They looked just like I'm visualizing right now, okay," Lance insisted, opening one eye to glare squintily at Hunk. He had screwed his face up in concentration.

"Maybe you're not thinking about them hard enough. It's not just about visualizing them, Lance. You have to have a strong _feeling_ about it. That's how it works."

"I'm feeling plenty. I'm feeling super excited about how cool it's going to be if we actually find them, and how dumb Keith's going to look with his stupid survivalist knife when we're wearing _these_ babies. Here," he said, releasing Hunk's shoulder and planting his hand atop Hunk's head instead. "Maybe you just need a better connection."

"Or maybe _you_ need a better connection," Hunk said. "You've never encountered these before. Just wanting isn't enough if you don't have some other feelings about them. Right now all you've got is being jealous of Keith."

"I am not jealous of Keith!" Lance said. "Why would I be jealous of Keith and his dumb macho old-fashioned fannypack knife?"

"Um, because you're making me look for even more macho, old-fashioned, backpack-style Altaen knives?"

The mouse squeaked in Allura's ear, and she nodded to it. "Yes, you're right."

She stepped away from the console and onto one of the lifts to the side of the master control platform. It dropped silently into motion, and Allura stepped out onto the catwalk in front of Hunk and Lance.

"Princess Allura!" Hunk shoved Lance's hand off his head and stood straight, giving her a weak smile. "I didn't realize you were in here."

"I was checking on the seals on the perishable storage," Allura said, gesturing to the platform above. "And I take it you two were looking for something? Ancient Altaen ceremonial blades, perhaps?"

"We just wanted to see them," Hunk said, and at the exact same time, Lance said, "That was just me. I'm the one who wanted to find them."

Biting the inside of her lip to keep from smiling, Allura chose to pretend that she'd only heard Lance's answer. "And Hunk was here because?"

"I was helping Lance find the storage unit," Hunk said. "We weren't going to do anything disrespectful with them, I promise. We were just going to look."

"There you go! Hunk was going to make sure we didn't desecrate your ceremony-thing blades. I just brought him along because he has a knack for finding things." Lance shrugged, then tilted his head, squinting a little as he inexpertly feigned listening. "Is that Coran calling for me? I think it is! Time to go find out what ridiculous chore it is this time."

"I, uh, I should go too," Hunk said, giving Lance an anxious look as he scooted off down the catwalk towards the lift at the end. "Look, I, uh-"

Allura hadn't meant to do more than tease them a little, but something made her reach out towards Hunk. She might never have a better chance to bring this up. "Hunk, wait."

He turned back towards her, questioning. "Yeah?"

"Hunk, were you aware that your energy signature changes when you're looking for something like this?" Allura asked. "The Yellow Lion picks it up."

"It does?" Hunk said. "I didn't realize it did anything that would affect my energy signature. I mean, like Lance said, I've always had a knack. If someone really wants to find something important to them, I can help. But I didn't think it was that big a deal."

"You seem to have an extraordinary talent," Allura told him. "The Yellow Lion certainly thinks so. You were speaking to Lance as if this 'knack' of yours had rules, so clearly you've studied its workings before. We could do some more investigation, if you'd like."

"That would be awesome. I knew it was a little, uh, out of the ordinary, but I didn't think it was a _talent_ ," Hunk said, flushed but clearly pleased. Then he hesitated, his hand going to the back of his neck. "Uh, Allura? Lance knows about it, but, uh, could you hold off on telling any of the other paladins?"

"Surely they might find it useful," Allura said, puzzled.

"Well, maybe, but they don't have to know about it for me to use it for them. They're all regular people," Hunk said, fidgeting. "I mean, Shiro has his Galra arm, and Pidge is super smart--but you know what I mean. It's not nice to brag just because I'm good at something. If I do have some kind of special power, I don't want to boast about it, you know? It would be rude."

Allura didn't know, but she nodded anyway. "If that's what you want, it can be our secret."

Hunk smiled at her in relief. "Thanks, Allura."


	2. don't need to know

"Allura, can I talk to you?" Shiro asked, intercepting Allura between the ballroom and the mess hall. "In private?"

"Of course, Shiro," Allura said, and nodded towards a side-corridor. "What is it?"

Shiro followed her in, glanced around, and then said, "Can we take this to the medical lab? Without bringing Coran into it, if that's possible."

Concerned, Allura frowned at him. "Of course, Shiro. But if you don't feel well, Coran is much better with the medical equipment than I am."

"I know," Shiro said, but his set expression didn't change. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, leaving his forelock in disarray. "But I don't want to talk about this to any more people than I have to. And I don't want it getting back to the other paladins."

"In that case, I'll see what I can do without calling Coran in," Allura said.

She beckoned for Shiro to follow her, and led him by back ways and service corridors to the medical lab, bypassing the cryochambers and healing pod bays where Coran might be working and the computer lab where Pidge almost certainly was. Ushering him inside, she closed the door behind them, hesitated a moment, and then locked it with a low-level security code. In an emergency, Coran could override it, but he'd know not to pop in casually if he came this way.

When Allura turned back from the door, she saw Shiro already sitting on the metal table in the center of the room, staring down at his right arm.

"What is it?" she asked, walking over. She found herself moving carefully, on the alert. "Shiro, is your arm bothering you?"

"No," Shiro said, gaze still fixed on the metal limb. "Not exactly. Allura, when they put this on me, they also--they put some other things in me, too."

He hesitated, and the worst rushed through Allura's mind. A control chip, a slow poison, a trigger word--she tried to remember where the panic button was in this lab.

"They changed me," Shiro said quietly. His metal fingers flexed, slowly, and then he turned his hand over and flattened it out against his thigh. "Sliced in alien DNA. I figured some of it out in the arena. I heal faster than I used to, and I haven't had an infection since the arm got installed. I need less air--no one could choke me out--and I'm immune to at least a couple of kinds of venom and toxins."

Allura sagged in relief. That wasn't anything new; she'd already known that Shiro was above the biological baseline as set by the other paladins, though she hadn't known whether it was because of age or training or other factors. She felt a twinge in her chest, imagining how he must have discovered all these changes, and reached out to put a gentle hand on his shoulder above the metal. Shiro looked up at her. For a moment he seemed startled, his eyes wide, and then he smiled.

"It's all things that have helped me in battle. So it's good for us, really. But I only find out what they put in me when I encounter something it helps with. That's not an efficient way to learn what I can do. I don't want to have a situation happen where I think I can't do anything for the team, and then find out later than I could have. So is there any way we can--test me? Find out what I'm capable of?"

Allura smiled back at him. "Since you know it's genetic slicing, we can determine what DNA you carry now with a simple gene scan. I don't need Coran for that. And from there we can examine what adaptations have likely occurred and test them one-by-one."

"Great." Shiro looked relieved. "I'd hoped we could do something like that. Thank you, Allura."

He'd made it clear enough that he wanted to focus on the mission, not his past, so Allura bit down on the urge to tell him that she was sorry this had happened to him. Instead, she asked, "Why don't you want the other paladins to know? They wouldn't think any less of you for it."

"No," Shiro said, and reached up to rub the scar across his face with his left thumb. Allura wasn't sure he knew he was doing it. "But they'd feel bad about it. I'm their leader, Allura. I don't need their pity, and we can't afford to have them worrying about me. It's already bad enough when I freeze up."

"They're your team, Shiro," Allura said gently. "They're supposed to care for you, just like you care for them. That's how the paladins of Voltron have always been."

"It shouldn't be something they have to deal with," Shiro said, grim-faced and stubborn. "This is just between us. Please, Allura."

For all that Allura disagreed, it was Shiro's team, and Shiro's body. "If that's what you want, Shiro, it will be our secret."

Shiro nodded, satisfied. "Let's get started."


	3. a habit of humanity

"Princess Allura!" Coran called, waving from a doorway down the corridor. "Princess, have you seen Lance?"

"Not since breakfast this morning, but I believe the paladins should be in the training room now," Allura said.

"Ah, good." Coran nodded. "Do you know when they'll be finished? I need to talk to Lance, and it's been quite a trial getting him alone. You'd think he was avoiding me."

Since Coran recently had pressed Lance, alternately indignant and sullen, into service as his assistant for a full cleaning of the storage bays--in response to something about Lance planning to misuse some Altaen ceremonial blades, according to the mice, though they claimed not to know how Coran had found out about that misadventure--Allura wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that he was.

"I cannot imagine why," Allura said, smiling and shaking her head. "What do you need him for now?"

"The other day I was checking the monitoring feeds for the paladins' quarters--Pidge really isn't sleeping enough in her own bed, I'm afraid I'm going to have to tip Hunk and Shiro off on that--and it looks like Lance isn't reverting back to his natural form nearly as often as he should. Maybe every two or three skips, at best." Coran frowned. "I'm a little worried about his cellular flexibility, and I wanted to get him into the lab to make sure he's not having any membrane stiffening. Don't want to let that progress unchecked!"

Allura frowned herself. "I'll go fetch Lance now," she told him. "Stay here and set up the equipment, and I'll bring him back to you."

The paladins were wrapping up their training session when Allura swept in. She stayed up in the control booth, after catching Shiro's eye to make sure he knew she was there. Allura watched with interest as they finished off a final exercise in the invisible maze, then held a quick post-training debriefing. Shiro invited her down at the end with a nod and a wave.

"Allura, did you need anything from us?"

"It's nothing important," Allura assured them with a smile, descending from the booth. "I just need to borrow Lance for a little while."

Lance perked up immediately, tucking his helmet under his arm and sidling over to her. "What can I do for you, Princess? Do you need my awesome muscles, or-"

Shiro frowned at him, and he cut himself off and took a hasty step sideways before Allura was obliged to defend her own personal space.

"Walk with me," Allura told Lance.

She ignored his outheld arm and deliberately swept ahead of him, making him scurry after her to catch up. She probably shouldn't smile at that, but she did anyway. Still, she waited until they were well away from the other paladins to explain herself. If it was just a minor dysfunction--well, the Felda she'd met before were sensitive about discussing those issues. Only once they turned down the corridor towards the medical lab did she look over at Lance.

"Lance," she said, trying to phrase it as delicately as possible, "are you having any... trouble changing form recently?"

Lance yelped, jumped, and crashed into the wall. Picking himself up, he stared at her wide-eyed and stammered an incoherent response. "You- I- how- why-"

Allura winced. Not delicate enough, it seemed. "I didn't want to embarrass you," she said quickly. "But Coran said that he was worried that it might be a sign of a more significant problem. He does have some experience in treating, ah, Feldese problems, so he wanted me to bring you by the medical lab to check-"

"Feldese? Never heard of 'em," Lance said, with a nervous laugh. "I'm sorry, I've got no idea what you're talking about. I'm just a regular human! Can't transform at all! Except through basic, regular human puberty, but that's all hormones, and I'm done with that. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill human."

Bewildered by his foolish babbling and unpersuasive grin, Allura took a moment to realize what he was getting at. "Lance, we know you're Felda," she said, unable to keep a tinge of exasperation out of her tone. "The lions are running constant scans of their pilots to check adrenaline and stress levels, you know. The Blue Lion uploaded the data as soon as she docked with the castle when she brought you here. And it's a good thing, too, or Coran would have wasted his time after the explosion to re-program your healing pod for human settings, which wouldn't have helped anything."

Lance blinked a few times. "I wondered about that."

Allura couldn't give in now, of course. "Whatever are you so worried about? Is there some reason you didn't want us to know you were a Felda?"

"It's just habit," Lance said. He grimaced, then drew a deep breath and shrugged. "On Earth, nobody can know. I'm supposed to stay in human form as long as I can bear it, and never change in front of anyone but my family when I do have to. Earth isn't ready for aliens among them, my folks always said."

"But how did Felda end up on a primitive planet like Earth?"

"We crash-landed," Lance said, starting to relax. "Centuries ago, before Earth even had atmospheric flight, so we couldn't just leave again. My grandparents always said that we were running from something, so it was for the best anyway, since we wouldn't be found someplace so far from civilization. They didn't remember what we were running from, but it was probably the Galra." He shrugged again. "And by the time Earth had spaceflight, it was home."

There was a wistful note to that last, and Allura gave him a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry."

"It's no big deal." Lance drew himself up, wrapping bravado and false confidence around him like another layer of armor, and gave her a grin. "One thing Earth doesn't have is Feldese hospitals, so I guess I can put up with Coran poking me a little if it means I don't go all _fffghft_ like Grandad all of a sudden." He made a wavy hand motion in the air that Allura didn't particularly want to interpret, and gave a dramatic shudder. "He couldn't go out in public for _months_. So lead on, Princess."

He started to stride down the corridor, then stopped and gave her a nervous look. "But, uh, can you and Coran keep it between us?"

Allura frowned at him. "If it's only a secret from habit, Lance, don't you think you should let the other paladins know? You should at least tell Hunk."

Lance frowned back. "Why Hunk?"

Allura opened her mouth to point out that Lance knew about Hunk's power, then hesitated. It had seemed straightforward to her after just the brief demonstration in the storage bay, but if Lance wasn't human himself, he might not actually know what was and wasn't normal for humans. And Hunk had asked her to keep his talent a secret. Revealing that it was out of the ordinary might count as breaking that promise, Allura realized, and reluctantly shelved that line of persuasion.

"He is your best friend, isn't he?" she said instead.

"Definitely," Lance said, nodding, but then stopped himself and switched to shaking his head. "No, no way. It's not about them! It's about my Mom. You have no idea how mad she'd be if I let humans know, no matter who they were. And when Mom's mad, the whole _town_ hears about it. I want to go home again someday, and I want to live long enough to enjoy it."

Despite herself, Allura was swayed by his beseeching gaze. "All right," she said. "It can be our secret."

"Thank you," Lance said. He looked for a moment like he might dive in and clutch her hands or something equally ridiculous, but then thought better of it. "Okay, let's get this doctor's visit over with. Do you think Coran has lollipops?"


	4. unimportant things

The garden had been Hunk's project, originally. Altean ships had advanced far beyond requiring hydroponics bays to produce either oxygen or food, and as long as the Castle of Lions was on a planet, there had been more than enough verdant landscape just outside to satisfy any Altean's desire for nature. But humans, Allura had discovered, had a much stronger yearning, and so what Hunk had started as a small food garden to add variety to their diet had turned into an entire room of green growing things, gathered from every planet they visited. Even Coran had gotten in on the garden, doing his best to help Hunk determine the ideal lighting and soil for every plant.

Allura didn't try to get involved in the cultivation of the garden. But she did like to wander through the room sometimes, taking in the few flowers that the paladins had coaxed into bloom. It was an especial comfort when she laid awake at night, troubled by memories of her father; nothing soothed her more than the clustered blossoms in one corner, each wildly different in shape, color, and scent, each from a different world, all reaching together towards the ultraviolet light that Hunk had rigged overhead.

The mice ran up the hall towards her, squeaking, as Allura approached the room, and she crouched down to listen to them.

"Pidge is in there too? Do you think she would mind if I join her?" she asked. At their report, she smiled. "Is she really? I must see this."

With the mice perched on her shoulders, Allura rose, straightened her skirts, and walked into the garden room. Pidge was there, kneeling by one of the improvised garden beds. Her hands were stretched out over the plants in there, a series of low berry-producing stalks that Hunk had had high hopes for but that had failed to thrive in his approximation of their native soil. Pidge had her eyes closed, and as Allura watched, a green glow shimmered between her fingers, stretching between them and the plants below like spider-threads of verdant light.

The glow vanished, and Pidge dropped her hands to her knees, sighed, and opened her eyes. "All right, I'll adjust your nitrogen content," she said to the plants, starting to rise. "But I just gave you a massive energy jolt, so you'd better start- Princess!" she exclaimed, spotting Allura out of the corner of her eye. She spun around and went stiff, spine straight, hands at her sides, face blank. "I was just- that is- I'm looking at Coran's data, and-"

"Talking to the plants?" Allura suggested, unable to keep a soft smile off her face. "It's all right, Pidge. The mice told me what you've been doing."

"Traitors," Pidge muttered, glaring at the mice. She was still scowling when she tilted her head back to look at Allura again, her rigid pose relaxing, only for her spine to curl and her shoulders to hunch up around her chin. "I'm not really a plant person, okay? Hunk's the one who should have the- the green thumb, but he doesn't. And when he puts all the data together he thinks he's accounting for all the variables, and then he gets all mopey when the plants die anyway, so I'm just... filling in the extra bits of the equation."

"Pidge, you don't need to be embarrassed about this," Allura said, her smile fading when she saw Pidge hunch up. Striding over, she put her hands on Pidge's shoulders. "It's a lovely talent, and you're putting it to good use. Why would you be upset about it?"

"Because I don't like plants," Pidge said. "And I don't want to run a flower shop, or start a garden, or all the other stupid things people suggest when they find out that a girl has a- a green thumb, is how my mom says it. Besides," she went on, hunching deeper, and Allura could tell that this was the root of the problem, "it's another thing I've been keeping from everyone. And telling them I'm a girl was one thing, but telling them I've got this weird _thing_ \--it's not even an _important_ thing to me, like being a girl is. But if I tell them it's going to seem like one, and it's another thing they'll know I've been hiding. It'll be like I don't trust them with anything."

"The sooner you tell them, the more they'll feel like you trust them," Allura suggested.

But the set angle of Pidge's sharp chin, and the hard glint in her eyes, made it clear that Allura was getting no traction. "I just don't want it to come up at all," she said flatly. "Don't tell them."

"I won't," Allura said. She was on familiar ground now, and the promise, unnecessary as she thought it, came easily. "It can be our secret."

Pidge relaxed under her touch, then shrugged off Allura's hands. "Okay. Just keep it quiet."


	5. better kept quiet

Given the way all the other paladins had acted when their unique traits were revealed, Allura was starting to get a feel for the way humans, or at least people integrated into human culture, approached these kinds of differences. And Keith was more reserved than the others, and prone to self-isolation. So as much as she wanted to reach out to him, Allura restrained the impulse.

Keith had reason to be sensitive about it, after all. Given Shiro's history, and the fate of Allura and Coran's people, he had better cause than any of the rest to hide his Galra heritage. The Red Lion knew, of course, and didn't care, but Allura had realized early on that the Red Lion was also filtering the data that she sent back to the castle to keep any clues out of what Coran received. If she hadn't had the mice keeping an eye on the paladins, Allura wouldn't have known that anything was going on at all.

After the mice reported the growing purple patches on Keith's hands and torso, it took skips of his persistent concealment of them, and the way he snuck into the lab at night and spent extra time with the Red Lion trying to apply and analyze her diagnostics, for it to dawn on Allura that she might have guessed his situation, but _Keith_ hadn't. It was the time with his lion that was the clincher; Allura could feel the Red Lion's frustration growing within the Voltron bond as Keith pored over the data she gave him and refused to see the answer there.

So much for self-restraint. After the next battle, when the Red Lion snarled and hissed at the other lions and fought Keith's commands for no reason but pique, and only reluctantly submitted to the bond when they all joined together in her determination to keep her pilot's secrets, Allura wasn't going to hold off any longer.

"Keith, I need to talk to you," she said over a private channel as the pilots began to disembark. "Wait for me in the Red Lion's hangar."

"I'll be here," Keith said, sounding almost as frustrated as his lion.

Ceding Coran the bridge, Allura made her way to the hangar, where she found Keith, tousled and scowling, waiting for her with crossed arms beside the Red Lion. He had his back to the lion, and she, sitting down, had turned halfway away from him. Her mechanical tail twitched restlessly against the floor, a loud, irregular rapping of metal on metal that only stilled when Allura arrived.

"I don't know what's going on," Keith said immediately, his jaw working, and made as if to shove his hands into his pockets. Remembering that he was still in his armor, he crossed them again. He had gloves on--he always had gloves on these days--but he still tucked his hands into the creases of his elbows, like he was afraid that Allura would see them. "I thought our bond had gotten better, until these past couple weeks."

It had been three skips, by Allura's count. Five skips since they'd regathered after the corrupted wormhole, and three since Keith had started going to his lion for answers. But human time units weren't her strong point.

"Keith, you've been asking the Red Lion some questions, haven't you?" Allura said, and saw his face freeze. "She's upset because you aren't listening to the answers."

"She isn't _giving_ me answers," Keith said. The Red Lion snarled and dragged the claws of one forepaw screeching across the hangar floor, making them both jump. Keith grimaced and shook his head. "Not answers I can understand. Something's happening to me, and she can't-" The claws dug in a little, with a tortuous grating of metal, and he amended the statement. "-I can't figure it out."

"Then I'll try to make it clearer," Allura said, and the Red Lion turned its head to watch her with one glinting eye. "Keith, I must confess I've had the mice watching you lately, and I've checked the castle's health monitors. I don't know what triggered it, but you're having a metabolic reversion." He gave her a look of frustrated incomprehension, and she tried to break it down more clearly. "Your biology isn't completely human, but it's been treated to function that way. That's common with cross-species hybrids that have to live on the planet of one parent or the other, since it's difficult to satisfy a fully hybrid metabolism. But the treatment can be disrupted, and then the metabolism and biology revert to their natural state."

"Hybrid," Keith repeated. "So I'm half-human?"

Allura nodded, trying not to look too worried as she watched for his reaction. The Red Lion had already shown him the DNA traces; the truth had to click into place shortly, however he resisted it.

He just grimaced and looked down at his gloved hands. "That would explain a lot," He muttered. "My father- anyway. Do you know what the other half is?" he asked, looking up at Allura, and there was fear there, hidden behind his clear determination to stay unaffected.

Allura felt her chest clench, and hoped she hadn't visibly winced. Allura looked up at the Red Lion, and the great metal cat gave her a solemn nod. "Based on the castle's data... Galra," she said. 

A sort of frightened anger flared in Keith's eyes, and for a second she thought he was going to lash out at something--maybe the wall, maybe the Red Lion, maybe Allura herself. She refused to step back, though, and after a second he just sagged, his hands dropping to his sides.

"I thought maybe I was turning into one," he said, looking at the floor. "After that quintessence splashed on me on the Galra ship. I guess I should be glad I'm still half human."

 _That_ was new information Allura would have to look into, but she set it aside for now. "We can't stop a metabolic reversion," she told Keith, wanting to lay out all the facts for him. "Once it's complete, we can re-run the treatment protocol, but it can take up to a full orbit to complete. And you have to finish reverting first. There are some things that can slow it down, though, so it doesn't happen so quickly it disrupts your metabolism."

Keith looked up and met her eyes, his jaw firming. "How long can I keep it from being obvious?" he asked. "Everyone's going to find out eventually, but I don't want to tell them all right away. Especially Shiro. He'll probably try to hide it, he'll think it makes him a bad leader, but you know he'll freak out."

"I know. But I think we can buy some time to come up with a plan," Allura said. The urge to tell him to go ahead and confess--to tell him that all the paladins had their secrets, and they'd understand better than he thought--was strong. To do so would be to betray their confidences, however, and he was right to want to approach Shiro in particular with consideration. She settled for smiling at him and saying, "You're not alone, Keith, I promise. For now, though, it's our secret."

Keith nodded back at her. The Red Lion, rumbling with a mechanical purr, turned about and curled her head down over him, close enough for him to reach up and touch. Touching the underside of his lion's jaw, Keith gave her an apologetic look. "Thanks, Red. And thank you, Allura."


	6. on the same team

"This is ridiculous," Allura told the mice.

The mice, lined up on the edge of her dressing table, nodded and squeaked sympathetically. Allura flung herself down onto her bed with more of a flounce than she usually indulged in, then sat up and glowered at the wall.

"Pidge doesn't want anyone to know because she's embarrassed. Hunk is afraid of looking like he's bragging. It's some kind of family taboo for Lance to say anything. Shiro's trying to shoulder everything instead of letting his paladins help him. And Keith is terrified that it's going to hurt his relationship with Shiro." She folded her hands in her lap to keep from throwing them up in the air in exasperation. "If just one of them was willing to tell, maybe the rest wouldn't keep their secrets, but the only one who doesn't have a choice is Keith, and he's the only one who isn't being _completely_ ridiculous about it."

One of the small mice squeaked extensively.

Allura shook her head. "I don't know if Lance is covering for Hunk, or if he doesn't even know that Hunk is unusual! But it's not the same as if Hunk told everyone."

The largest mouse gave a loud chirrup.

"That's true." Allura rested her chin in her hand and tapped her thumb against her cheek contemplatively. "But I don't know how I could without breaking my promise to someone."

The big mouse chirruped again.

Allura shook her head. "Pidge wouldn't fall for that."

The littlest mouse gave an emphatic, excited squeak.

"But what if Lance still refuses to transform? Or doesn't even think about it? He's not very bright," Allura pointed out.

The smallest mouse squeaked again, disconsolately, and its sibling patted it gently on the back and then offered a suggestion of its own.

Sighing, Allura shook her head again. "That's tempting, but that's too much like deliberately telling them. Shiro would know I did it."

Glaring at all of them, the bad-tempered mouse scolded them with a series of sharp, angry squeaks.

Allura made a moue of disappointment, but she had to concede its point. "You're right," she said, reluctantly. "It is up to them. I just wish there was something I could do about it."

She would have to let them come to it naturally, she supposed. Even if she had no idea how long that might take.

***

In battle, Allura had a whole different suite of frustrations to deal with. It had been something of a relief to throw herself into planning this raid, but the plan, as the Earth saying apparently went, hadn't survived their first encounter with the enemy.

They knew that the Druids had devised a new weapon devised around a special kind of crystallized quintessence, they knew that the prototype was getting a test run in this backwater system, and they knew that this was their best chance to disrupt its development and use the prototype to figure out how to counter the weapon. They even knew that it would be well-guarded, though the majority of the escort ships had gone down easily, taken by surprise.

They hadn't known that the weapon's design would so effectively function as its own defense.

"If these readings are right, the entire back half of the ship is acting as some kind of super-advanced particle accelerator," Pidge said over the comms. The Green Lion had flown in under cloak while the rest of the lions took out the bulk of the ship's defenders, so that they could get good readings of the oddly-shaped ship before launching their assault. "The crystal must be in the core areas, but all I can tell through the shielding is that they're flooded with radiation, and the power channels I'm picking up at the middle are too small for a human to navigate."

The Green Lion's readings flashed up on several of the bridge's screens, with Pidge's annotations marked in bright green over the blue wireframe models. "If these readings are right, simply blowing the ship out from the outside might detonate the weapon prematurely," Coran said. "We could be caught in the blast. Someone will have to go onto the ship and collect the crystal. It looks like the reactor generating the radiation can be shut down, but whoever does that will need better shielding than just the armor to get close enough without taking a dangerous dose."

"The data I got from their mainframe suggests there's a biolock on the crystal itself," Pidge said grimly. "They're getting smart about that sort of thing now that they know we're out here. It'll take Galra DNA to do anything with it."

An icon blinked in the corner of Allura's command screen, but before she could reach to press it, Coran had already hooked it into the main channel. "If I go in there, I know I can find the crystal. All the Galra on there will be thinking about it, and that's enough emotional energy to point me straight there," Hunk said.

Another icon blinked and vanished as Coran transferred it, and Shiro started talking right over Hunk. "Allura, I can take that much radiation as long as I'm not exposed for more than twenty minutes. We've tested up to that limit. I can go into the irradiated areas and turn the reactor off without taking any damage."

Two more icons started to blink simultaneously, and Coran patched them into the main channel again. Allura should have stopped them, since by now she'd realized why each paladin was trying to connect with her privately, but it did make sense not to try and juggle them all at once. "Paladins-" Coran started to say, but Lance interrupted.

"Hey, Princess, remember how Coran made me transform into a mouse, just to see if I could do it? I think I can squeeze down that small long enough to get into those channels and pull the crystal out."

"If Lance can get that crystal out to me before it finishes powering up, I probably have enough Galra DNA to override the biolock and deactivate it," Keith said. "Since I guess he can turn into mice now?"

"Uh, are we all on the same channel?" Hunk asked.

There was a brief pause, in which Allura could do nothing but clamp her fingers over her lips and desperately fight down an inappropriate fit of the giggles. Then Coran sighed.

"As I was _saying_ , if you had let me speak, since you all attempted to contact Princess Allura at once, I thought it would be easier to patch you all back into the main channel so you could communicate more efficiently."

"Galra DNA? Keith?" Shiro said, sounding lost.

Allura could hear Keith huff into the comms. "I didn't want you to find out this way--look, I'll explain later. We need to focus on the crystal."

"Yes, the crystal is our highest priority," Allura said, managing to force a semblance of sobriety into her voice. "Shiro, go in and get that reactor turned off. Hunk, go after him and see if you can get enough impressions off the Galra to track the crystal down. Lance, go with Hunk, and you can get through the power channels in mouse form once he finds out where it is. Pull it out and take it straight to Keith so he can unlock it and power it down. Pidge, Coran, how much time do we have to deactivate it?"

"We have twenty-two minutes and thirty-eight seconds," Pidge said, drowning out Coran as he gave his estimate a tick too late. "Thirty-seven seconds. I'll stay in my lion and take out the last couple escorts if they try to do anything but limp away."

"I know everyone wants explanations," Shiro said, in his best 'setting it aside' voice. "I'm sure you'll want to know why I-"

"Galra experiments," four voices answered at once.

Allura could almost hear Shiro blink. "Yes. All right. But the other explanations can wait. Right now we have a mission to finish."

Four lions turned as one to dive towards the ship's bulky bow, while the Green Lion pulled away to circle in a wider pattern around it, her cloak dropping and her weapons systems powering up.

"I can communicate with plants," Pidge added suddenly. "It's not useful for this mission, but I don't want to keep any more secrets."

"You can- okay. Good to know," Shiro said. The Black Lion landed on the hull of the ship, and the other three clanged down near it in quick succession. "All right, paladins, let's move out!"

As the paladins started on their plan, Allura reached out to the corner of her command screen and brought an icon back to life, re-opening one of the closed private channels. "Keith?"

"Yes, Princess?" Keith said. She couldn't quite tell whether his tone was guarded or just distracted.

She smiled and went on anyway. "I did promise that you weren't alone."

"Yeah," Keith said. And then, just before he closed the channel again, "Thanks."


End file.
